Marina & the Diamonds has had quite a year. For one, there’s been the small matter of a number one record for her second album ‘Electra Heart’ which she celebrated with cider, champagne and vodka, in that order. Then there’s been the task of tackling the U.S. market, which has got off to a flying start with a tour slot on Coldplay’s epic arena tour. All this and Marina’s been figuring out just what exactly what the heck her four character concept record is actually all about.

 ‘Sometimes as an artist I do things and I don’t really know why I do them, and I think in the beginning I felt I had to justify why I had worked with American producers and come out with pop songs’, says the 27 year old Welsh wunderkind now, dressed down in a lovely ‘Get Bent’ slogan tee and back to her natural brunette after a period of bottle blonde. ‘And now I don’t need to, I just say I did it because I wanted to. At the time, I was just over-theorising it. Whereas really it’s an album that having a real fear of love, which is very real to a lot of people, but I couldn’t say that because it comes out so dramatic and weird.”

So instead, as is her way, Marina went and made a dramatic and weird pop opera about love and being lost which may explain why she’s got herself a big gay following in the process. She says that her US gigs at present sell out because of a combination of teen girls and gay men, but she doesn’t totally know why she’s such a hit with the latter. ‘Gay men have really good intuition for something that’s, that has a cult quality and which hopefully [laughs] might be massive some day. They get the campness of it, they don’t take it literally, and they get the humour. But I don’t know why I get on so well with gay men.’

Well Marina, we’ll take the compliment.

You can read a full interview with Marina and the Diamonds in our Awards Issue, in shops and on ipad Friday, October 19.
 
Marina and the Diamonds plays a number of events in Dublin and other European Cities during November and December. You can buy or sell tickets to this event via our secondary ticketing partner Viagogo by clicking here.